Avideo conferencing system based on SDN-enabled SVCmulticast<FootNote> Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61573329 and 61233003), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China </FootNote>

Abstract

Current typical video conferencing connection is bridged by a multipoint control unit (MCU), which may cause large delay and communication bottleneck for the whole system. With the development of network technology, a video conferencing system can be implemented based on software-defined networking (SDN), which makes the service controllable and improves the scalability and flexibility. Additionally, a video encoding method called scalable video coding (SVC) can also help. In this paper, we propose a video conferencing architecture based on SDN-enabled SVC multicasting, which discards the traditional Internet group management protocol (IGMP) and MCU. The system implements SVC multicast streaming to satisfy different device capabilities of various conference terminals. The SDN controller is responsible for dynamically managing and controlling the layers of a video stream when a conference member faces network congestion. Also, a conference manager is designed to facilitate the management of the conference members. Experimental results show that our system can not only provide a flexible and controllable video delivery, but also reduce the network usage while guaranteeing the quality of service (QoS) of video conferencing.

Keywords

Software-defined networking (SDN) / Multicast / Scalable video coding / Video conferencing system

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RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Zhejiang University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg